Committees

Royal Irish Academy
Committee for Irish Literatures in English Conference
Academy House, 19 Dawson St, Dublin 2

Ireland and the Fin De Siecle

Thursday 3rd – Friday 4th September 2009

Thursday 3rd September

4.30pm Registration

5.00pm - Panel One: George Moore

George Moore, Somerville and Ross and the reconstruction of optical experience in late nineteenth-century Irish short fiction
Dr Julie Anne Stevens (St Patrick's College, Drumcondra)

George Moore’s Fin de Siècle: themes and variations
Dr Mary Pierse (University College Cork)

George Moore and the Catholic Novel
Dr Eamon Maher (Institute of Technology, Tallaght)

6: 30pm - Keynote Lecture - MacLiammoir: The Last Wildean Decadent

Dr Eibhear Walshe (University College Cork)

7.30pm Wine Reception

Friday 4th September

9.00am Registration

9:30am - Panel Two: Wilde Panel

Salomé, the saint and the seller of apples: Oscar Wilde
and cross cultural connections
Dr Noreen Doody (St Patrick's College, Drumcondra)

Oscar Wilde and the Radical Politics of the Fin de Siècle
Dr Deaglán Ó Donghaile (NUI Maynooth)

‘The same flesh and blood as one's self! Oh, I hope not!’: Representations of Fin de Siècle Ireland in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray”
Dr Sondeep Kandola (University of Leeds)

10.30am Break


11.00 Panel Three: The New Woman

Katherine Cecil Thurston
Dr Kalene Nix (University College Cork)

Grand’s Ideala (1888) and Lawless’s Grania (1892) and the structure of experience in new-woman fiction
Professor James H. Murphy (DePaul University, Chicago)

The New Woman and Ireland: Brittania’s Rebel Daughters?
Dr Tina O’Toole (University of Limerick

12.00 Noon Break

12.15 Noon - Panel Four: George Egerton

George Egerton and the Irish Short Story
Dr Heather Ingman (Trinity College Dublin)

Forging the Uncreated Conscience of Her Sex: Decadence, New Womanhood and the Escape from Ireland in George Egerton’s The Wheel of God (1898)
Whitney Standlee (University of Liverpool)

The Yellow Aster and the Green Carnation: Decadent Nature in Irish New Woman Fiction
Dr Maureen O’Connor (Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick)

1.15pm Lunch [Not Included]

2.30pm - Keynote Lecture:

'Myths, dreams or unearthed truths? Symbolist imagery in the arts of Fin de Siècle Ireland'

Dr Nicola Gordon Bowe (National College of Art and Design)

3.30pm Break

4.00pm - Panel Five: The Fin De Siecle and Cultural Representation

Vernacular and Dialectical languages in the European and Irish Fin de Siècle
Dr Brian Ó Conchubhair (University of Notre Dame)

Harry Furniss and the Art of the Fin de Siècle Caricature
Dr Aoife Leahy (Dublin Institute of Technology)

Learning to be Brutal: Synge, linguistics, decadence
Professor Alex Davis (University College Cork)

Posing for Posterity: the Irish photographic portrait at the Fin de Siècle
Dr Leon Litvack (Queen’s University Belfast)

To register, please click here

For further information please call 01 6762570

The Big House in Twentieth Century Irish Writing

Tuesday 14 th and Wednesday 15 th October 2008

Programme

14th October

6pm: Professor Vera Krielkamp “Still Standing: the Big House Novel and the Critics”

(Chair: Dr Eibhear Walshe)

7.15pm Wine Reception

15th October

9am: Registration

(Chair: Dr Éilís Ni Dhuibhne)
9.30am: Professor Otto Rauchbauer: “The post-Yeatsian Irish country-house poem: analyses, backgrounds and contexts”

10.30am Panel 1: Lennox Robinson and his contemporaries
(Chair: Dr Derek Hand)

Clare Nally, “Owen Aherne and Michael Robartes in Yeats’s later work: a dialogue between the Catholic majority and the Big House mentality”

Ian D'Alton, “The last Big House: perspectives from Lennox Robinson and Elizabeth Bowen”

11.30-11.45PM: COFFEE

12-1pm: Panel 2: Modernist Fiction
(Chair: Dr Brian Cliff)

Ellen Wolff, “Gender and Empire in Elizabeth Bowen's The Last September”

Eve Patten, “Climates of treason: Henry Green, Elizabeth Bowen and the wartime ‘Big House’ narrative”

Sean Kennedy, “ ‘Waltz me round Willy’: The Ends of Ascendancy in Beckett’s Watt Notebooks”

1pm-2pm: LUNCH [Not Included]

2pm: Dr Julie Anne Stevens: “Somerville and Ross and the ‘portable property’ of the Big House novel in the twentieth century”
(Chair: Ms Selina Guinness)

3-4pm: Pane 3: Contemporary Drama
(Chair: Dr Colin Graham)

Alison O'Malley-Younger, “ ‘Dressing Up In Ascendancy Robes’ – Brian Friel’s Aristocrats”

Mary Burke, “Tom Murphy: Reconstructing the Big House in Celtic Tiger Ireland”

4.30-4.45pm: COFFEE

4.45-5.45pm: Panel 4: Contemporary Fiction
(Chair: Dr Eibhear Walshe)

Rachael Sealy Lynch, “The ‘Great Bright Red American Fridge’: Big Housekeeping in Jennifer Johnston’s Two Moons”

Anne Markey, “The big house in contemporary popular fiction”

Olwen Purdue, “ ‘My duty as an Ulster “lord of the manor” ‘: the Big House in Northern Ireland politics and society 1921-60”

5.45-6pm: Closing Remarks: Dr Eibhear Walshe

Conference Closes

Download here as a pdf file

The State of the Art
Literary Production in Ireland
Key recommendations from the
Royal Irish Academy Conference 5 May 2006

In 2005 the RIA Committee for the Study of Irish Literatures in English decided to host a conference on the current conditions for the production of literature in Ireland. The conference addressed the following topics: Production: Writers; Production: The Business of Writing; The Role of State Institutions: Mediation . The substance of the presentations to the conference and of the related discussion is summarised in the report by Eugene Downes who served as Rapporteur

It is the committee's hope that this document will offer helpful information to interested parties engaged in literary production in Ireland and that it will stimulate discussion and appropriate action.